Best Sporting Goods Store

Galyan's Sports and Outdoor Adventure

Galyan's opened its first store in St. Louis this year, and it's worth the trek to west county. The store packs the works: shoes, clothes and gear for recreational sports and the great outdoors. Despite its size, you hardly ever have to wait in line. The sales staff is attentive but seldom annoying; they have a welcome tendency to let the customer speak first. Galyan's features a rock-climbing wall, but the incentives to climb the wall are unclear. Why strap on what looks to be a crotch-unfriendly harness just to scale to the top of a wall that leads to sprinkler heads protruding from the ceiling? Better to check out the shoes or the basketballs. The chain started in Indianapolis in 1946, when Albert and Naomi Galyan opened a grocery store with a few hardware and sports-related products. From that humble beginning, Galyan's has grown into an eighteen-state chain that has changed hands twice.